A headline in the BBC caught my attention today: "Polar bears face 'tipping point' due to climate change." In other words, polar bears may be on the slight or not so slight decline right now, but when global warming hits a particular threshold potentially in the very near future, conditions would be so adverse so suddenly that polar bears wouldn't stand a chance for survival.
Perhaps it's because I was given one of those stuffed Gund polar bears when I was an infant, something I have and hold dear to this day, but I've always been especially fond of polar bears. It's truly heartbreaking to read that sometime in the near future, they could cease to exist. What's worse is that this is becoming the rule nowadays for many species, rather than the exception. Al Gore may have brought some nationwide attention to the plight of polar bears, but there's still much to be done. A troubling excerpt from the article:
"Canada has about two-thirds of the world's polar bears, but their conservation assessment of polar bears didn't take climate change seriously," says Dr Molnar, a flaw noted by the IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group last year. "Our view is that the Canadian assessment should be redone, properly accounting for climate change effects.
"The status of polar bears is likely much more dire than suggested by the Canadian report," he adds. "For instance, for a while we will only see small changes in summer fasting season survival in Western Hudson Bay. [But] eventually mortality will dramatically increase when a certain threshold is passed; for example, while starvation mortality is currently negligible, up to one-half of the male population would starve if the fasting season in Western Hudson Bay was extended from currently four to about six months."
I'm glad I read this article, because the first step towards change is awareness.
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